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Walmart Takes Back Seat In Sunday Circulars

Not so in Sunday circulars though,
where the company’s everyday low price
policy (EDLP) precludes participation
in the weekly ritual, which is dominated
in CE by sale-driven (high-low) retailers
like Best Buy and hhgregg.

Indeed, aside from promotional periods
like holidays and back-to-school, weeks
can go by without a Walmart insert. IFR
Group, a market research firm based here
that tracks shelf share and circulars nationwide,
intercepted one a week before
Memorial Day that was light on CE and
heavy on grills and outdoor furniture.

Walmart was represented in two of
five core categories that IFR tracked
for TWICE and ranked among the 10
lowest-priced products in each, compared
with other big-box retailers that
weekend, including Best Buy, hhgregg,
Sears, Target and Kmart.

Within LCD TVs 40 inches and
larger, Walmart had the lowest advertised
price — $548 for a 42-inch, 60Hz
Sanyo 1080p LCD with 4,000:1 contrast
ratio and three HDMI inputs, reduced
from $628. Sears had the highest
advertised price — $1,530 for a
46-inch Samsung 3D plasma — on a
list that was dominated by Samsung,
Insignia, LG and Sharp by brand, and
Best Buy and hhgregg by retailer.

In contrast, Best Buy singularly dominated
the laptop/netbook category
with models that ranged from a $330
Dell Inspiron Mini netbook to a $700
HP Pavilion laptop with an Intel Core
i3 processor.

Walmart’s sole entry, a Dell 1545 notebook,
came in at the mid-high range of the
list at $598. The model was configured with
Windows 7 Home Premium edition, an
Intel Pentium dual-core T4400 2.2GHz
processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard
drive, a 1.3-megapixel Web cam and a seven-
in-one media card reader.